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Raised Biscuit and Light Rolls
Raised biscuit or light rolls, can be made of any kind of bread dough with the addition of some shortening. When made of a specially prepared sponge, only milk is used for the wetting. To a pint of bread sponge obtained as directed, add a third of a cupful of melted butter, or lard, or half of each. And, if desired, from one to two level tablespoonfuls of sugar. The shortening should be warm, but not hot, and stirred into the sponge until well mixed. Add the flour next, three pints more or less, and knead well. The exact amount of flour cannot be given. When stiff enough, turn all out on a well floured bread board and continue to knead, adding more flour if necessary. Enough flour should be added at this kneading, so no additional flour will be needed when the rolls are molded. Knead at least twenty minutes. The more the dough is kneaded the finer will be the grain. When it is smooth and elastic, place the dough in an earthen bowl slightly dusted with flour, and paint the top with melted butter, cover well and put it in a warm place to rise. In about two hours the dough should have almost, if not quite, trebled in bulk, and is then ready for shaping. Only enough kneading is required at this stage to liberate the large bubbles of gas formed during the rising process. Use (if any) the merest dusting of flour in shaping or cutting the rolls. Place the rolls in well buttered pans, let them rise, closely covered, until very light, and bake in a rather hot oven. Brush the rolls with sweet milk just before and after baking, to give them a rich brown color. A beaten egg, to which is added a tablespoonful of milk or water, makes a beautiful golden brown crust. Brush the rolls with this as they are ready to be baked.
A sponge-method roll dough with the proportions given by volume and the flour left deliberately open. The instruction that governs everything here is the long knead: twenty minutes by hand is what produces the fine, close grain the author is after.
- The sponge"A pint of bread sponge obtained as directed" refers back to the book's bread chapter: a slack batter of yeast, liquid and part of the flour, left to ferment until foamy. A pint is 2 cups. For a modern equivalent, mix 1 cup warm milk, a packet of instant yeast and about 1 1/2 cups flour, and let it bubble and fall, roughly 1 to 2 hours.
- Milk, not waterWhen the specially prepared sponge is used, the recipe says "only milk is used for the wetting"; dough made from ordinary bread dough is simply enriched with shortening. Milk softens the crumb and browns the crust faster.
- Flour quantity"Three pints more or less" is 6 cups, but the author is right that no exact figure works. Add until the dough clears the bowl and stays soft, then hold back the rest for the board; you may well need less than the full amount.
- ShorteningA third of a cup of melted butter, lard, or half and half. Warm, not hot: hot fat will kill yeast on contact.
- KneadingTwenty minutes by hand; in a stand mixer with a dough hook, 8 to 10 minutes on medium-low gets you to the same smooth, elastic point. The dough should pass a windowpane test.
- The risesTwo hours to nearly triple is a warm-kitchen figure. Judge by volume, not the clock. The second rise, after shaping, should go until the rolls are genuinely puffy and a pressed fingertip leaves a dent that fills back only slowly.
- "A rather hot oven"Roughly 400 to 425F in modern terms, with small rolls at the higher end. Figure about 15 to 20 minutes.
- GlazingMilk before and after baking gives a matte brown finish; the egg-and-milk wash gives gloss and a deeper color. Use one or the other, not both, and apply the egg wash lightly so it does not pool and set the rolls into the pan.
- YieldNot stated. A pint of sponge plus roughly 6 cups of flour makes a large batch, on the order of two to three dozen dinner rolls.
The sponge method belongs to an era when bread was made from a living, kept ferment rather than a measured packet of yeast, and a sponge might be set the night before. "Raised biscuit" is the older American usage, distinguishing a yeast-leavened roll from the quick chemical-leavened biscuit that had spread widely by the later nineteenth century; for decades the word covered both before "biscuit" settled on the baking-powder version. What marks this as a company recipe rather than daily bread is the enrichment: butter or lard, sugar, milk instead of water, and an egg wash for gloss. The author's insistence that the exact flour cannot be given reflects a period when flour varied by mill and by season, and when cooks were expected to read dough by hand rather than by scale.